My goal is to advance our understanding of the relationships between organisms and their environments by advancing our knowledge of how living things biomineralize. Biomineralization is the process by which organisms make functional structures to survive. Functioning to provide skeletons when they are alive and adding to the fossil record when they die, biominerals link the soft, organic parts of Life and Earth’s hard materials.

Understanding the fundamental process and evolution of biomineralization has implications for deciphering life’s origins, and it holds keys for the futures of other fields. Furthering our knowledge of the how life evolved on Earth will inform astrobiology by advancing our understanding of life as we know it, aiding in the search for extraterrestrial life. Also, biominerals are some of the strongest, lightest, and most bio-compatible materials; the more we understand about biomineral properties and how they form inspires the future of materials and medicine.

In effort to understand biomineralization, my scientific work combines novel geochemical tracers (i.e., elemental analyses, metal isotopes, and carbonate clumped isotopes) and wet lab chemistry (synthesis and culturing experiments) with X-informatics techniques, including multivariate and phylogenetic analyses and machine learning.

My published papers can be found on my Papers page or ResearchGate, and projects I am currently working on are listed on my [link in website header: ‘CV’]. If you want to know more and/or are interested in working with me, feel free to get in touch!

Click to expand and get links. Please note: these are only publications related to my dissertation work.